SOURCE: Kohn, Marek. “Homage to QWERTYUIOP.” New Statesman and Society 4, no. 149 (3 May 1991): 33-4.

In the following review, Kohn offers a positive assessment of Bully for Brontosaurus.

Stephen Jay Gould is halfway into an essay [in Bully for Brontosaurus,] having kicked off with Handel and proceeded via the panda's thumb, when he shows us a picture of his typewriter; or at any rate, an identical model. It's an upright, manual Smith-Corona from the days when the Sopwith Camel was the last word in aviation technology. This is the machine he uses to write his reflections on evolution.

The substance of that particular essay is how the QWERTY keyboard came to dominate typewriter design. It demonstrates Gould's ability to take up a story that seems closed, and to take up a story that seems closed, and to invest it with an unsuspected richness. It's fairly widely known that the QWERTY...